Ideally, wouldn’t leaders be self-aware and self-reflective?

If you went to most Type-A company builder guys and asked them to make a leadership skills list, I assume it might look something like this:

• Brings in clients
• Makes money

… and that’s the end of the list. Now, this shouldn’t necessarily be the case — but often it is. We have boatloads of research on leadership at this point; we even have intel on the eight most crucially-effective leadership skills out there (potentially). There are so many ways to look at leadership by this point that it’s hard to enumerate. Most of us are just drowning in daily tasks and hoping we don’t work for assholes, but maybe there’s something to this idea of a leadership skills list.

Here’s the common issue, though. Usually when you talk about leadership skills, there are two categories:

• The “real deal” stuff (tied to making money)
• The “soft” stuff (we know it’s important, but hard to track)

Since companies love them some Spreadsheet Mentality, “soft” leadership skills traditionally fall by the wayside. Best example: we all know it’s vitally important to communicate well at work, but almost no one ever does it. Work communication, instead, is usually screeching and bellowing around hierarchy. (“Because I make more…